When planning screwed up my life
When I decide to take a jump off from the corporate ladder in pursuit for a life of self-reliance, I have planned every single detail — micromanaged — all the events that may go south with absolute certainty.
And I was so dead wrong.
Of course, coming from an 8-year planning background, old habits are hard to kill.
I wanted to own a barber shop
Initially, I fantasized of using a relatively large chunk of my savings to open up a barber studio on my own. I even had the design laid out, taking into consideration the location and the place where I would build up my trade.
I ended up collaborating with a mutual friend, who has been helpful and offered a place for me to start.
Naturally, pride has got the better of me.
I wanted to experience what it was like to own my own shop. This collaboration seems like a setback to where I wanted to go, until…
My savings are silently being wiped out
Yes. My cash flow was not that fantastic, to begin with. Of all the factors I have considered, I always thought that I had my finance in place before jumping ship and never really bothered much.
Unforeseen financial consequences had left a huge crater on my hard earned money. This oversight has made me come to realise that no matter how certain you plan, life has a tendency to screw it up.
And that was not all.
The worries
With my expenses flowing like a leaking faucet, panic and doubt sets in. Negative thoughts begin to fester as I began playing all the unnecessary scenarios in my mind.
Am I supposed to fail?
Is this what life has to offer to me?
Or maybe I should throw in the towel before I get hurt, really bad?
You know, that’s the beauty of life. It’s funny how much I missed the other part of the equation:
“No matter how much we plan for the best, we always neglect to prepare for the worst outcome.”
The worst outcome.
I am sinking, but have yet to reach the bottom.
Maybe the worst was in my imagination after all. As the saying goes, we underestimate what we are certain about and grossly underestimate the unknown.
Only time shall tell
To share the struggles with a friend has been really comforting.
Chubbs, my business partner/founder of this studio, has been a real blessing for having given an opportunity for me to experience what it is like to own a studio.
Perhaps, this is life’s way of testing my mettle, to take everything in my stride and live positively.
“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.
I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary.
I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms…”
— Henry David Thoreau
